Featured Research

2018 Election Center

Research Highlights

Our 2018 Election Center contains the most important CIRCLE data and analysis related to young people and the 2018 midterm elections, as well as additional tools and resources like our Youth Electoral Significance Index.

Featured Research

2018 Youth Electoral Significance Index

Research Highlights

Where will young voters play a decisive role in the 2018 midterm elections? Our Youth Electoral Significance Index (YESI) ranks the top 10 Senate, Governor, and House races where demographics, competitiveness, historical turnout and more suggest strong potential for the youth vote to be especially influential this November.

Featured Research

CIRCLE Co-Leading Campaign to Get Young People Ready to Vote in 2020

Research Highlights

22×20 is a national coalition that will work toward increasing and diversifying teen voice and engagement in national and local conversations and electoral processes, in order to be informed and active participants in U.S. democracy leading up to the 2020 election cycle and beyond. CIRCLE is excited to be working with partners from diverse fields like media/journalism, civic education, youth voting, and media literacy.

Featured Research

The RAYSE Index: A New Tool with County-Level Data on the Potential to Improve Youth Engagement

Research Highlights

Our new RAYSE Index brings data to bear on efforts to broaden access to youth engagement opportunities. The comparative county-level data can provide research-based support for making the case that engagement has a high potential for growth and for making decisions about where to invest resources (e.g. time, resources, funding).

Donating to a political campaign is an important form of civic participation. It’s one of many ways that individuals can be engaged in an election, and offer concrete support to the party or candidate that they feel will advance their interests and represent their values. Increasingly, particularly among Democrats, some of whom shun large corporate Read More >

The 2018 midterm election year was a historic high point in youth engagement. There was an immense amount of peer-to-peer organizing (like coordinating an event, helping peer register or talking to them about the election), particularly for a midterm cycle, which tends to have lower participation than a presidential election. There was also substantial activism Read More >

We recently released estimates of 2018 midterm youth voter turnout in all 42 states for which youth voting data are available in the voter files. Our analyses found that, in every single state, young people’s turnout rate increased compared to 2014. Based on the data from those 42 states (which represent 94% of the American Read More >

Last month, CIRCLE released 2018 midterm youth turnout estimates for 34 states in two separate posts: here and here. Today, we are publishing youth turnout estimates for the last eight states for which reliable data are available[1]. Both individually and taken together, these turnout estimates confirm and add context to the overall trend of higher Read More >

After the 2016 presidential election, we found that youth were deeply uncertain about the state of democracy in the United States. Declining trust in government and democratic institutions has been growing over time, and according to the Pew Research Center, the election of a President that most Americans see as lacking respect for democratic institutions Read More >

Featured Data Chart

The RAYSE Index

Our new county-level RAYSE Index (Reaching All Youth Strengthens Engagement) is a data-based tool to help identify places with high potential for improved youth engagement where investment may make a big difference.